Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother`s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I`ve written, what I`ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word "memory" into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.

Infinity is like a wild animal, spotted in the depths of a forest. You catch a glimpse of something, but moments later you aren`t sure if you saw it at all. Then, unexpectedly, the animal comes into full view.

It`s a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we`re too stupid to know which, and since we don`t know which, we might as well take the least risky option. Even taking two alternatives side by side with full information, a choice can still be hard. Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance; they`re hard because there is no best option.

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